Quebec police are investigating a very sad case about a dog and her eight puppies that were attacked with a nail gun near Granby and left for dead just before Christmas. Hundreds of offers for adoption have poured in and the case is all over the on-line news as well as the newspapers. The story is distressing and horrific.
That said, the same day the police started that investigation there was another article in the news that ought to be even more distressing; Continued gang rapes and violence in the refugee camps in Haiti (police there apparently often just drive by and official reports/complaints are met with shrugs). Yet where is the outrage on that report? How does the one about animals somehow generate more of an effect in society? One might conclude that our media believe dogs in Canada are more valuable and worthy of compassion than girls and young women in Haiti. Of course, if you ask any one individual, you’d almost certainly hear the opposite opinion. Why then the decision to promote one new story over the other? Just who determines the hierarchy of suffering?
On this point the National Post had an interesting article (the same day). It focused on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and their intention (when they open in 2013) to have a special section for the Holocaust. This decision is being met by some resistance among groups that have also suffered (such as those under the Holodomor), raising the question of how one groups’ suffering can be more important than another’s. The author of the article wrestles with this, and wonders if it is because we have a more complete grasp of the horrors of fascism (being book-ended by the rise and fall of Hitler) and don’t fully grasp the extent of communism’s murderous spree, which started in the early 1930’s under Stalin and was still in full swing in China under Mao in the later 1950’s. A morbid case could be made that higher quantities of people died under Mao than under Hitler.
But I don’t think it is quantities of people that ‘qualifies’ it as newsworthy in this day and age. I think it has much more to do with how well the readership can relate to the people (or animals) in question. The hierarchy of suffering only really matters to curators and statisticians – if someone we know and care about is suffering, then that’s all the motivation we really need to champion their cause. The opposite is also true. If we don’t have any personal connection, then it’s just a statistic. A number to exclaim a comment on and then pass by. There is no lasting impact and certainly no change in either the reader or the situation.
That may seem like a very simple observation (create a relationship, create impact), but the implications are profound in this day and age when most relationships consist of on-line text. It means those who develop better on-line relationships are much more able to effect change, and that means the causes of those who ‘friend’ and ‘tweet’ the most are those which will ultimately direct the agenda of the day.
Now how do you think that bodes for Christianity in the coming days? And we wonder why the persecuted church suffers in silence still.
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